It's impossible to turn a Pynchon novel into a Hollywood movie. That's a rule,
and to this day, Inherent Vice remains the only, lucky exception. It doesn't
try too hard to be a singular film -- it takes place in the same cinematic
universe as The Big Sleep, Zabriskie Point, The Long Goodbye, Chinatown or The
Big Lebowski -- but it doesn't try too hard to follow Hollywood tradition
either. It's set in the long, dark comedown from the Summer of Love, Los
Angeles in 1970, a world illuminated by a warm but fading afterglow of sex and
revolution, a constellation of characters driven by rebellion, fear, paranoia,
criminal ambition and short bursts of melancholy, a storyline punctured by
strange little loops and occasional flashbacks. The result is a downtempo swirl
of a detective film, a sad, mostly subtle, then at times hilariously unsubtle
comedy, and probably the only truly great stoner noir in the history of cinema.